Helen Vasquez preparing for evening prayers. She is one of two women who remain at the Pecos Benedictine Monastery. Three left after being told by the Vatican that they could not be considered nuns.
Posted on 01/09/2006 6:42:59 AM PST by NYer
PECOS, N.M. - Nestled in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains outside this village in northern New Mexico, the Pecos Benedictine Monastery has long been considered cut from a different cloth from many other Roman Catholic religious communities.
Its chapel is in a structure that, more than 50 years ago, was part of a dude ranch where burnt-out urbanites came to relax. The gift shop is in an old adobe building that was a stop on the Pony Express. Solar panels adorn much of the stucco complex, a well-known location for combining the study of Christian spirituality and Jungian dream analysis.
The monastery acquired much of its open-minded character in the 1970's, when followers of the Charismatic Renewal Movement, which emphasized healing through prophecy and prayer, as well as speaking in tongues and a welcoming approach to women, arrived here. Men and women were drawn to Pecos and stayed, forming an unusual monastery where both monks and nuns had close contact, worshipping, eating, conducting retreats and raising honeybees together.
But the monastery today is going through a rough transition. After an effort last October to attain canonical status for the five women at the monastery, who were considered nuns by the 15 monks living here, the women were told by the Vatican that they were not nuns in the opinion of the church.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Seems to me it's either a monastery or a convent. Make up your mind.
"Seems to me it's either a monastery or a convent. Make up your mind."
The tricky thing is that the residence of cloistered nuns can also be a monastery.
There is historical precedent for foundations including both men and women ... Fontevrault in France, Whitby in England. Either the rules have changed over the centuries, or this establishment doesn't meet whatever requires Rome has for a mixed institution.
BTW, "monastery" and "convent" are not sex-distinct terms. The correct term for a particular religious house depends on the canonical status of the order and the vows taken by the religious, not on whether men or women are present.
Since when does one become an 'official nun' by simply 'self-ordinating' so to speak. . .have the members of this community been smoking incense or something?
The Vatican is right. . .they are NOT nuns. . .
'Wishes' are not horses. . .time to move out and 'move on'. . .
Ask anyone who has ever been associated with a so-called "mixed community" how it works out.
A clue may be found in a saying among monastics: "The wimple always rules the cowl." :-)
**monastery or convent**
Think they can decide? LOL!
Honestly, people can be such foolish creatures. These people are "playing church" - like me & my siblings used to do when we were little kids. Only difference is they don't have to wear Daddy's white dress shirts for vestments or make the Lord's Supper out of Ritz crackers & grape Kool-Aid! I'm pretty sure this isn't what Our Lord was talking about when he said we should be "as little children"....
So what's stopping these women from going through the usual channels to become nuns?
Mixed-gender monastic communities were not unknown of in the early centuries.
The double-monasteries of the Middle Ages consisted predominantly of a house of women to which was attached a smaller and totally separate residence for priests and in some cases brothers. The priests primarily served as confessors and spiritual directors to the nuns. The abbess was in charge of the administration of the entire community--the priests obeyed her as far as being members of the community was concerned but the nuns (and abbess) obeyed the priests insofar as priests had authority over non-priests.
These monasteries were essentially women's convents with a male community attached. The Pecos situation is nothing like that. The rules have not been changed. The Pecos community simply didn't fit any of the existing, approved patterns for monastic life and they don't seem to have tried to conform to the rules. There's nothing in principle that would prevent a revival of the double houses of the Middle Ages but that's not what the Pecos monastery was doing. One of the leading double-orders of the late Middle Ages was revived in the last century, the Brigittines. They have a house in Oregon and one in Connecticut. But I don't know if they are double-monasteries or not. I know there are men in Oregon and women in Connecticut--so perhaps the revival was a revival in some ways but a new approach in other ways.
A bit misleading. Women's residences and men's residences were strictly separated, with some exceptions in the early centuries where a true mixed-gender community existed. But that approach was canonically eliminated for the obvious reasons--it too easily led to scandal. Some feminists decry the abandonment of these early mixed-gender communities but it would be more accurate to say that it simply did not work and monks and nuns themselves concluded that better ways of organizing monastic life were needed. The medieval double-monasteries had separate and distinct residences for the men and limited interaction.
Thanks for the information - I wasn't up on the details, just vaguely remembered that foundations with both sexes existed.
There's the tip-off, right there. Inclusive means any lunatic professing any metaphysics or ethos except the Traditional Christian one. Sodomites welcome, anyone who considers sodomy an abomination is not.
I don't understand why the idea of devoting one minor year to a novitiate was objectionable to these women. Nor the idea of religious vows that would follow a successful year as a novitiate.
Instead, they declined the privilege and remain without vows...
I agree that they are not nuns, in relationship to and with the Catholic Church. Seems like they were offered the reasonable, reliable process and declined it.
The article doesn't explain what their objections were, other than that they were "not comfortable commenting about it" and so...
A puzzle.
The behavior by these women and the priests who have indulged them seems to suggest that they are either "playing church" or are making an offensive rejection of the Catholic Church.
After thinking this over, the latter is what I've concluded they're engaged in. They were offered the opportunities to become nuns, to study and receive vows, they rejected those, and yet persist in some state of pretense that suggests to my view that they're rejecting the Church.
In which case, they do not belong in any relationship with the Church, particularly in ministry under the pretense they've assumed. Minister as member of the body of Christ, yes, we all should and do, but the pretense engaged by these women (and supporters) seems to suggest a lack of honor, a process that brings dishoner upon the rest of us, and upon the Church.
Reincarnation principle and practice/belief?
As in Latin cultures, with Sangria and voodoo and such, it seems there are lots of people who claim to be "Catholic" but who are actually involved in many spiritual, "metaphysical" practices that are counter to Christianity, if not enemies of it.
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